These will change periodically and may sometimes include previews for a new client.

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Example 6

Imprint Schoolwear provide schoolwear to local schools. There are a number of perculiar features that could not be  achieved with a ‘standard’ ecommerce package.

Schools

When a customer registers with the website, they are provided with the opportunity to select which school/group they belong to. When they return to the website and log on, this allows provision for numerous possibilities.

• Discounts need to be applied by school, so products may appear with different discounted prices depending on the school
• Vouchers need be created and restricted by school. A promotion can therefore be applied to a school which allows a promotion code to be entered during the checkout procedure for a discount to be appled.
• Product categories can be restricted by school so items specific to a particular school only show on the website when someone registered to that school logs on.
• School commission can be applied and accounted based on the purchase of selected branded products and later reported and printed, seperated by school.

Accounts

In most ‘standard’ cases, it would be necessary to manually enter all online sales into an accounting package which is very time consuming.

No problem! One of the advantages of the system is that any data can be produced and exported in any desired format for use with any other system within the business.

VAT

VAT is a particular problem. Generally speaking, products have a tax class and variations of the product, with price adjustments, would inherit the same tax class. In this case, children’s clothes are not subject to VAT until age 14. This means that in normal circumstances, it would be necessary to feature all senior school items twice, one for upto age 14 and again for over age 14. This alone would have a dramatic negative effect on the visual impact and complexity of the site. What was needed therefore, was the ability to change the tax class depending on the product option. This makes VAT calculation very complicated because every product has to be examined to see what variation was ordered to see whether VAT should be applied or not.

No problem! If a long-winded manual procedure can be defined, it can be provided programmatically. A quarterly VAT calculation now comes down to picking a date range and clicking a button.

Supplier Data

Suppliers provide information such as new product catalogues and revised price lists. In the normal case, it would be necessary to edit or insert each individual product, maybe hundreds.

No problem! A big advantage of the system is that it can import data in any required format which will immediately be reflected on the website.

Custom Reports and Data

The Back-Office provides many standard reports such as Product, Stock, Orders, Customers but there are often non-standard report requirements. In this case for example, commission is offered to schools on the sale of branded items. There is a requirement to create commission reports, exportable as PDF documents, broken down by school and months.

No problem! Another great strength of the system is that data, exportable in any format such as Excel spreadsheets. Reports based on that data, can be easily generated and printed or exported.

Eco Home Products supply heating components to both domestic and trade customers. There are a number of perculiar features that could not be achieved with a ‘standard’ ecommerce package.

Extended Information

Product definitions allow for a product description that is very adequate for most situations. In some case however, more technical information is required than could sensibly be featured. A fully searchable information system therefore allows documents to be categorized and related together.

Trade Accounts

The website is designed to sell to both domestic and trade customers. Trade customers can purchase selected products at trade price. Product prices are adjusted to suit when they log-on to the system.

Some trade customers are allowed to hold accounts with 30-day terms, in which case, during the checkout process, they are presented with an additional payment option to purchase on account. The different order statuses reflect that the goods are not yet paid for and reports allow quick and easy visibility of all payments outstanding or overdue.

Purely Poultry is a small family operated business that sell everything for poultry keepers and have a good reputation within the poultry show fraternity. Even with a small business, there are perculiar features that could not be achieved with a ‘standard’ ecommerce package.

Delivery

Small items go by Royal Mail. The charge needs to track Royal Mail shipping costs taking into account weight banding and packaging. Different services are only available below a certain overall weight over which, they cannot be offered.

Some items, though light, are cumbersome so require Royal Mail to be disabled.

Above a certain weight, it becomes more economical to use a small local carrier so delivery options need to change accordingly; he only has a small van however, which will not accommodate some of the larger items so a different, more expensive carrier has to be used instead.

Certain items, such as live hens, are only available for pick-up by appointment which must be the only delivery option. And so it goes on!

All of this intelligence is designed to suit with the delivery page changing dynamically as items are added or removed from the basket.

There is an increasing requirement for schools to provide an e-learning capability. Many schools have spent significant sums of money on VLE (Virtual Learning Environments), LMS (Learning Management Systems), and any other pretentious titles they can come with, which, due to their over-complexity, are often unpopular and consequently poorly used.

A website was prepared that offers ease of use. Consequently, it is very popular with both staff and pupils, and can grow each year as the school evolves.

Tests

Easy self-defined tests with different question types for auto or self-marking and good visibility of results.

• Teachers can set up a new test or modify an existing one with refreshing ease
• Tests can have mixed question types, be multi-staged, random, increasingly difficult etc.
• Ability to present custom ‘log-on’ forms to be completed before taking a test
• Test completion can show custom page or results summary
• Teacher (or group) can request email notification on specified criteria (eg. Pass/Fail)
• Whole test results can be examined and form basis of queries and reports

Timetable

The ability to easily add tests and resources to a calendar which may then be displayed as a timetable or agenda offering restricted views depending on logged-on role and filtering by category (eg. school class) and/or tag (eg. numeracy).

• Learning resources, self-designed tests, events can be easily added by teachers
• Can be linked (import or export) to ics calendars such as Google Calendar / Outlook
• Filter by group (eg. Year 6) or tag (eg. Numeracy) or multiple pre-filtered calendars
• Various views (eg. Month, Events List, Agenda) for clear vision

If you are looking to establish or improve the online activity for your company, the range of solutions and costs can vary enormously. In broad outline, in the most obvious example of ecommerce websites, the options are:

Standard Webshops

There are many standard offerings for providing an online shopping facility. Since they are ‘standard’, they have to cater for ‘standard’ needs. A provider will usually have thousands of shops so the product has to be pretty fixed.

If you simply want to be able to add products to website categories and provide a shopping cart to which products can be added and a checkout procedure that allows them to pay, this may well be an adequate solution and can be inexpensive.

Bespoke Webshops

When it comes to software, to most, ‘bespoke’ implies ‘expensive’. It is true that to even replicate the functionality of a ‘standard shop’ where all of the code is written from scratch would be a very large undertaking and would certainly cost well into five figures.

The benefit of course, is that you end up with something that will exactly fit the way that your business works and may be changed or added to to suit as your business grows.

Online-Magic

Our offering lies somewhere between the two. Systems are constructed from a wide range of modules that allow complete flexibility in the way that it operates.

If there is something not catered for within the existing functionality, a new module will be prepared to handle it. This way, you can get something very well tailored to suit your business but without the cost of a completely bespoke system.

The role of the system is to provide and manage a Webshop (or other functionality website), or collection of them.

The simplest example to visualize is an online shop but it doesn’t have to be. It could be anything from a public shop to a private corporate website with any content being restricted to users or groups of users. In fact, anything where you want to interact with groups of users.

Maintain all aspects of your website(s) with no required technical knowledge.

The Back-Office allows the online system to be integrated with your office systems.

One of the key roles is to provide data input and output that will make it possible to automate otherwise laborious tasks and to provide integration with other office systems.

Data Output

Data output can take many forms such as Query Data Grids, Reports, PDF Documents, Excel Spreadsheets, XML or CSV Files etc., in fact, just about any format you desire.

Typical examples would be:

• File(s) in required format for direct import into your company accounts package
• PDF Documents for distribution
• Datasource for Mail-Merges such as Newsletters, Letters, Invoices, Printed Labels

Data Input

Data Input can similarly take many forms such as Queries from another database, Excel Spreadsheets, XML or CSV Files etc., in fact, just about any format you desire.

Typical examples would be:

• Datagrids to allow easy, fast direct updates of online data
• Stock level updates from stock control system
• Price list updates from a supplier

In most cases, this will be simply a case of clicking a button, after setting some simple criteria such as a date range where appropriate.

In general, the ‘Webshop’ offering is easily strong enough to provide the main website for a business. In some cases however, there may be much more information to impart than product information.

The Wrapper Website offers a separately managed website which shares the basic design and styling of the Webshop and is designed to accommodate a Webshop, or collection of Webshops within it.

In the case of multiple Webshops, the Wrapper Website also offers the means of selecting the most appropriate shop.